“There was Nat Smith, Sam Smith, Jim Smith, Bate Smith, Jo Smith, Quill Smith, Bill Smith, and more of the Smith family, and Sam Carouse, Jake Carouse, Sylvester Root, Sam Kirk, Tom Kirk, Tom Bryan, Andy Caster, Tom Carter, Jim Bryan, Bony Sheldon, Wash Cranford, Jim Bay less, Mart Huck, Henry Hight, Tom Crawford, John Silvain, Ross Briggs, and a host of others of the ‘knights of the whip and reins,’ of those old coaching days,
‘When hand to hand they cut and strive,
Devil take the hindmost of the drive.’
“Near by stood the old ‘smithy’ of Capt. John G. Bell’s father, whose bellows flapped, and red sparks flew, and anvil rang, night and day, to keep the horses feet in trim, so that down the slope to Honduras, and on to Borden’s hill and Taylor’s hill, and o’er Salt Fork’s long stretch, through ice and sleet, these Jehu’s could safely, and on time, move on their load of living freight and the mails sent out by ‘Uncle Sam.’ John Skimmings, one of the early settlers at the mouth of Wills Creek, was the general agent from Columbus to Wheeling, of the great Neil, Moore & Co., whose lines cobwebbed the State of Ohio. Otho Hinton was the United States mail agent to look after the mail robbers. He turned out to be one himself, and was placed under arrest for opening the mails between Cambridge and Washington. He was indicted and arraigned before the United States court at Columbus, released on bail, and fled to Honolulu, where he died in 1856.
“Gen. N. P. Flamage placed on the road what was called the opposition, or Good Intent, line of stages. This was just after the Washingtonian temperance movement. He made temperance speeches along the line, and required his drivers to take the pledge. He stopped at Cambridge and made a speech in the old Presbyterian church, and sang a song, his drivers taking up the chorus. We give in substance, if not in word, a verse:
‘Our horses are true and coaches fine,
No upsets or runaways;
Nor drunken drivers to swear and curse,
For its cold water all the days.
CHORUS.